Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring is one of the most influential books of the 20th century. However, people still criticize this book saying that it lead to protest against pesticides. Rachel Carson writes how DDT is toxic to many of the animals, especially the birds and can harm them. There is another argument however; DDT kills mosquitoes that carry malaria. Critics argue that this has affected many of the people living in countries like Africa who are majorly affected by malaria and after the ban of DDT, the spread of disease has grown killing thousands. Carson apparently never wanted the ban of DDT. All she wanted was the balance of the use. United States have become cleaner and healthier since Silent Spring. However, the critics are still there and they still continue to criticize. DDT (insecticide dicholorodiphenyl-trichloroethane) was pesticide created to kill insects that ate the crops and attacked trees, bothered people and transmitted disease. Rachel Carson was first introduced to this situation when her friend complained witnessing the death of birds after DDT was sprayed around that certain area. Carson decided to take a look into that situation and ended up writing a book called Silent Spring. However, many people criticized this book saying that she was a girl and didn’t know anything; they complained that this book was full of inaccurate information. During these attacks Caron was getting from the people, she suffered from cancer, dying not too long after the publication of Silent Spring. Carson’s book marked the beginning of the environmental movement which was when many citizens demanded and wanted to develop the environment, making it a better place by reducing pollution and protect areas from environmental degradation.

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...SilentSpring
1. A. I was captivated with the way Carson began the book with the imaginary town that had suffered plagues due to pesticides. She then went on to say that these were based off real events that happened all over the country. Also it was fascinating how much Rachel Carson new about carcinogens and the ill effects of pesticides such as cancer and birth defects. This was at a time when this was not a wide spread fact.
B. The protagonists in this novel are nature and the public. They are both innocent and are slowly but surely being hurt by the antagonists which would be the government and the chemical industry which produced DDT and other pesticides.
C. This novel revealed the effects of pesticides on not only nature but on us humans. In nature pesticides were being killed because of the blanket of chemicals that were being released because the people releasing them wanted to get paid more. It was then revealed that super insects were being created because of natural selection, so the strong bugs would survive and go on to produce more resilient bugs. Humans are suffering from chemical pesticides and this is why many cancers, birth defects, and deaths come about.
D. The novel opens with Rachel Carson speaking of an imaginary town that has gone through many catastrophes because of pesticides and says that these are based on real happenings in various towns. She says that pesticides are like atomic radiation because they are...

...﻿Rachel Carson’s SilentSpring, first published in 1962, bright light to how the widespread use of chemical pesticides was posing a serious threat to public health and leading to the destruction of wildlife. While numerous philosophers have written on this topic throughout history, Rachel Carson did an excellent job at creating a more basic way for the general public to comprehend the troubles in the environment at the time. This book was no doubt in response to the increasing awareness in the 1960s of the effects that technology, industry, economic expansion and population growth were having on the environment. Carson's thesis that we were subjecting ourselves to slow poisoning by the misuse of chemical pesticides that polluted the environment may seem like common problem in today’s world, but in 1962 SilentSpring contained the bud of social revolution. In Rachel Caron’s, SilentSpring, she highlights the effect of harmful pesticides such as DDT have on the American Bald Eagle; The bald eagle’s recovery is perhaps the best-known example of how our environmental laws worked to restore not just a resource but also our very national symbol since 1967.
In an interview with Linda Lear, she stated that Rachel Carson “wanted us to understand that we were just a blip […] the nature around us is the real world and we must treat it as such.” She always recognizes the fact that we are only given...

...AP Environmental Science
30 September 2013
APES Book Report
In the 20th century, man’s advancement in industrial and chemical technology began to significantly alter nature in world. In 1962, when “SilentSpring” by Rachel Carson was published, the author believed that the assault upon the environment through the contamination of the air, the earth, its rivers, and seas, were contaminated with dangerous and lethal materials created by man and his ignorance towards life itself. As agriculture became a profitable business, the need to grow more crops on less land gave rise to new forms of farming including the use of pesticides. In towns and cities a similar fate occurred in that disease and infestation gave rise to the use of deadly pesticides. At the time that this book was published there was a belief that Americans have “… put poisonous and biologically potent chemicals indiscriminately into the hand of persons ignorant of their potential for harm.” Pesticides and chemicals were used with little or no research as to their effect on soil, water, wildlife, and humans. Topics discussed in the book relating to environmental science include water pollution, population decrease, and the poisoning of organisms.
One of the topics mentioned in “SilentSpring” by Rachel Carson is the pollution of water through pesticides. Water pollution by pesticides is only one form of water pollution along with radioactive waste,...

...In the second chapter of Rachael Carson book “SilentSpring”, she points out the danger associated with pesticide usage. She states that pesticides are used to kill off certain pests and weeds, but they are also affecting unintended targets. By providing reason and example, establishing herself as a credible voice, reaching out to the emotions or her audience, and the way she presents her ideas, Carson convinces her audience that pesticides are harmful and dangerous.
Carson supports her argument by explaining that synthetic pesticides would not disappear, but rather linger and build up. She then explains how the deadly chemical will not only kill the targeted weeds or pest, but kill all life caught in the crossfire. For this reason she states that the insecticides should be called “biocides”. To avoid this, Carson believes that pesticides should be eliminated.
Carson establishes herself as being credible. To do so, she had to inform her audience about the dangers of pesticides. She explained how careless spraying will become deadly and affect humans. She then linked the past destruction of the wild life to pesticides usage, which created environmental concerns. People were convinced and Carson changed the way people thought about using the chemicals. As a result, she influenced the environmental movement and the banning of DDT nationwide.
To strengthen her argument, Carson appealed to the emotions and values of her audience. She does so by...

...The following quote "The sedge is withr'd from the lake, And no birds sing," (Keats)
seems like a very simple sentence with no meaning to it. However, after reading Chapter 6 of
SilentSpring , I realized how loaded the comment is with meaning. The quote is describing
humans and how humans treat the plants here on earth. The quote describes a scene where
humans continue to destroy plants because they feel that they are in the way or that the plants are
not appealing to look at. However, the plants that humans kill each day with chemicals and
pesticides end up ruining the complete area and stripping it of the natural beauty of the land. The
situation cannot be fair when chemicals are used. Humans today expect that when they kill a plant
then that is the end of it and all is fair. This cannot be more wrong according to this quote. When
you kill one thing many others will die along with it. In Chapter 6 of Rachel Carson's SilentSpring Carson tells of how after chemicals are used many beautiful roadsides and lands were
destroyed and the edges along rivers and were destroyed also which left animals without food and
water. The first part of the quote is describing this. "The sedge is withr'd from the lake" is
another way of showing the destroying of plants. The sedge that was withr'd in the quote has
been stripped of its natural beauty. This was caused by chemicals used along this lake to...

...SilentSpring Analysis
SilentSpring is a book that makes just about everyone think, except for the major chemical companies that it was attacking. This is definitely one book that help shaped how we look at the environment today and also how we approach it. Rachel Carson aimed for a book that was going to open peoples eyes to what really was happening and who and what was doing it. She nailed this right on the head, while the book was very technical when it came to talking about the details of DDT, it was written at a level that everyone could understand and relate too. Easily this could be one of the most important books written in American history, where would we be without it and how would our future have turned out.
While this book was aimed for the public to be able to understand, it also directly attacked the companies who were manufacturing the chemicals that people were using, especially DDT. If one were to try to explain how DDT worked at the chemistry level, most people would think your insane, but Carson is able to explain the devastating effects of this chemical in a way that everyone can understand. She does this by explaining the process chemically first, but then switches gears into how it is hitting people at home. This starts in the first chapter where she begins with “There once was a town…”. This is the beginning of the account that shaped Americans way of looking at the environment,...

...Micaela Quiroga
SilentSpring Rough Draft
Ms. Evans, AP Lang, pd. 3
September 2012
In America today, many people do not realize the impact they have on the environment. We come from a more educated generation, yes, but many people do not realize, that even just recycling can led to less deforestation, and ensuring that the environment of many animals is still there and safe. Much like how deforestation can negatively affect animals, it negatively affects us, less trees means less oxygen, and less oxygen, less to breathe, causing more. In SilentSpring, by Rachel Carson, she attempts to enlighten the reader on how the use of pesticides has an overall negative effect on the environment, animals and humans. Carson draws this conclusion based on her belief that humanity is ignorant, and that we are under the false impression that we are in some way superior. Following this she also suggests that we, as humans, are victimizing nature, and attempting to cure it like a disease.
In SilentSpring, Carson addresses her belief that it’s not necessarily human’s incapability of understanding the negative consequences of their actions, but rather the fact that we as humans, are unaware about these consequences and due to this. In the processes ignorance we are not only greatly harming the environment and animals, but also ourselves as well. She suggest that we live under and illusion where...